Machines of Eden

by Shad Callister

  I do not have time for this.

  “Eve, someone just shot at me. Any ideas who?”

  Silence.

  “If I am killed, you don’t get your code. Period.”

  Her response was muted, almost humble. “It may be Janice. She has a...fickle temper. Be careful. There isn’t anything I can do at this point.”

  He slammed his fist against the cabinet, rattling it. “Why didn’t you mention that she saw me?”

  “I didn’t know,” Eve protested. “She’s a very devious person, and she… may not trust me completely.”

  The problem was time. The shooter could be approaching, repositioning, or remaining in ambush, waiting to shoot the second John left the tower. He had to assume she was coming. That meant he had three, maybe four minutes.

  The lock on the cabinet door was a manual key lock. Purposely old school, to diversify security. And it slows me down. But not too much.

  Pulling his pocket kit out, John chose his favorite tool for fast jobs that didn’t need to be delicate. It was a small tube-shaped soldering iron, needle-like at the tip and similar to a cauterizing pen. He slid the switch and held down the charging button, waiting until the tip was glowing brightly, then pressed it straight into the lock. He pushed until it drilled right through, molten steel dripping out onto the floor. He put the tool away and broke the cabinet open with a good kick and a yank.

  Forty seconds, and there wasn’t even incoming fire hitting right around me. I’m losing my touch already.

  Inside the cabinet was a stack of thick Avalon datacards. Grabbing one, he left the room and cautiously approached the front door of the tower to peer out the small window. No one in sight.

  Any other way he tried to leave the tower would expose him even more. What he needed was a distraction.

  He rummaged in the cabinets inside until he found something he could use: a small flare from an emergency kit. He wrapped the flare in some flammable sacking from a dusty refuse bin and then lit it, walking rapidly to the door. Taking a deep breath, he threw the door open and flung the hissing flare bundle across the bridge as hard as he could.

  It bounced off the central hub’s wall and skidded away across the walkway. He cursed. Aside from melting some plastic weather shielding at the base of the structure, it wouldn’t do any good there.

  Then a hatch opened on top of the mushroom dome over the hub building, and an automatic firehose emerged. Swiveling to aim at the small fire he had started, the mechanized nozzle shot several bursts of heavy foam. The air was instantly filled with millions of particles that shone in the sunlight.

  Good enough.

  He bolted out of the doorway and crossed the bridge in three bounds. A shot rang out, but it came late and he was already pressed against the doorway of the hub. This time he had kept his head up, and could see that no one was perched on any of the towers. The ridge, then. That was good, it gave him more time and meant that the sniper had remained on the headland.

  John slipped inside the central hub and made a quick search, finally finding what he was looking for. With his pocket kit screwdriver, he removed a stainless steel lid from a storage locker and carried it to the door. The central hub was between him and the ridge, so he skirted the walkway until he reached the bridgehead. Holding the locker lid toward the ridge, he hit the bridge at a dead run, headed for the Data Center. Two shots were fired, one puncturing the plexiglass on the bridge, and then he was inside.

  Four minutes later he emerged with a live datacard in his cargo pocket.

  “Eve?”

  There was no answer.

  “I’ve got the code, Eve. Now I just need to find a way out of here without getting shot.”

  The generator at the cable-car dock began to hum. He froze.

  I didn’t activate that.

  A new voice sounded in John’s earpiece. It was feminine, but definitely not Eve.

  “Eve can be treacherous. Maybe you’ve already noticed that. I’ll punish her once I’ve taken care of you.”

  11.5

  Buzzard bots were a particularly nasty creation, deployed originally in the wars of the early twenty-first century as surveillance drones for urban combat zones. Each bot was the size of a grapefruit and carried optics and recording/transmitting hardware. They deployed in swarms, usually twenty, and were one of the first bot generations to possess a hive mind. A central controller could monitor all twenty from the safety of an armored comm tank, but they functioned as an autonomous system. If one was destroyed, the others knew and adapted. Working in tandem, a swarm of buzzard bots could easily infiltrate a bombed-out city block by block, spying on everything and everyone.

  Later, as the technology advanced, the buzzards were outfitted with small caliber weapons. Their ammunition capacity was small due to weight concerns, but when a swarm triangulated a soldier, it was all over. Twenty simultaneous bullets from all directions, coordinated and adjusted by the hive AI. There was no escape.

  Combat techs had been especially vulnerable. Usually only lightly armed, relying on the infantry for protection, techs were singled out for termination. Even if the buzzards couldn’t get to them, they’d hover, relaying the position to the artillery, and a barrage was always soon in coming. Even worse, techie units assigned to forward recon were easy prey for buzzard pods set to deploy when motion sensors were triggered.

  Sergeant John Fletcher lost a good friend that way once. Brooks had tripped through a laser beam in the dark and the pod erupted almost at his feet. By the time the rest of the squad got to him, Brooks was riddled and bleeding out.

  Techie units took to carrying shotguns, nicknamed buzzard-busters, but still it was always touch and go. In urban zones the trick was to lead the buzzards into a narrow place where they were clustered and there was no room to maneuver. But outside, in the open, it was murder.

  12

  Well, that’s blown it wide open, John thought.

  Keep moving, muttered Sergeant Wiley.

  John hugged the steel locker lid and leaned around the edge of the hub building. The cable car was still in its dock, but would begin its cliff-ward journey any second. He could hear the beginnings of the generator whine.

  Options were obvious and limited. The cable-car access was the choke point; it was the only way to or from the station. And the cable car itself was not an option. From the sound of the rifle she was using, Janice could turn the car into Swiss cheese. Unless John found a way to get back to Eden without being seen, his sniper would eventually pick him off. His cover was limited and she could wait him out or come in slow, boxing him in until there was no place to hide. And if she had bots at her call, the job would be that much easier and quicker.

  There has to be another way. After another moment of thought, he found one.

  He broke into the open and sprinted for the loading dock in a wild zigzag. No shots came, surprisingly, and he made the cable car just as the gears kicked in and the empty car began to move. He slid to his knees, putting the car between him and the cliff top, and quickly tossed the locker lid through a window.

  As the car moved up and away from him, he reached for a sturdy loop of steel cable that was bolted to the bottom end of the car. This allowed it to be hooked and dragged with a pole when near the dock, but John used it now to hook his elbows through and hold tight as he left the platform. His legs swung freely beneath him as the car moved upward into the open air. He felt ridiculously exposed, but as long as Janice remained above him on a direct line toward the cliff top, he was blocked from view by the cable car’s body.

  A loose strand of the steel cable he held punctured his skin painfully. He ignored it, focusing on recalling his anti-sniper training. You had to find them, but first...

  Distract until location ascertained.

  He cleared his throat and spoke into the earpiece. “So, uh, Janice, right?”

  The woman responded instantly. “Names are unnecessary.”

  “Oh, I think they’re very necessary, Janic
e,” John said. Might as well overdo it, as long as I’m trying to get under her skin. “You know, I never liked the name Janice. Sounds like a headmistress of one of those uptight girls’ schools,” he reflected, trying not to let the strain of hanging outside a cable car affect his voice. “Glenn probably secretly hated you. I know I sure do, and I’ve only just met you.”

  “Adam, please don’t—“ Eve began, but was cut off.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Janice grated. There were a few seconds of silence and then she spoke again, almost muttering to herself. “Glenn was brilliant in so many ways, and yet so strikingly naïve. It caught up with him.”

  The cable cars were about to pass each other, and he would be at his most vulnerable.

  Time to really kick the hornet’s nest. Maximum distraction.

  “One thing I've been curious about – did you kill Glenn yourself, Janice, or have one of the bots do it for you?”

  There was total silence in his earpiece, and then the cars passed each other. Rapid-fire gunshots from three meters away shattered the tranquility of the seaside ravine, and he felt the car rock with the impacts. Swinging farther under the car, he hooked his feet through some bars that ran parallel to either side, and grabbed onto them, hiding his body under the car’s belly.

  The gunshots stopped. He tucked himself as close to the underside of the car as he could, refusing to lower his head to look back at the other car that would be rolling down into view by now.

  Seconds ticked by and there was no sound other than the rattle of the cables overhead. There had been no further shots and he had to be nearing the cliff top dock by now, but he couldn't relax.

  The voice that finally broke the stillness was calm and quiet.

  “Is he gone, Janice?”

  “If he was hiding in the other car, he’s definitely gone and it’s your fault,” Janice said. “You’ve been a bad, bad girl, Eve.”

  There was a silence. “How long were you listening to us?” Eve asked.

  “Long enough, Eve. It’s over. I'm locking you all the way down after this. I can't afford any more messes like the one in that cable car.”

  “Janice, what he said about Glenn...”

  “It's not important anymore, is it, Eve? Anyway, who are you going to listen to, me or some intruder we don't know from Adam?”

  Eve sighed. “I suppose it's for the best. He was exhibiting a rebellious streak that made him ill-suited to what we're doing here.”

  “We’re going to have to have a chat about your recruiting efforts behind my back, Eve.”

  John was almost to the docking platform at the top, and couldn’t resist breaking in. "Sorry to disappoint you ladies-- I'm not quite dead yet."

  "Where are you?!" Janice shrieked through his earpiece, so loud he winced.

  The cable car docked with a satisfying clunk. If Janice turned now and looked up she would be able to see him easily, but he was banking on Janice being completely focused on spotting him down at West Station. A simple mistake, but that’s all he needed. You wouldn’t have lasted long in my unit, sister.

  With considerable effort he climbed back into the car, now peppered with jagged holes punched through the sheet metal, and through the car to terra firma on the edge of the headland. He immediately dropped and crawled to a tuft of grass at the cliff’s edge. He didn’t see anything; Janice must have moved into a building, hunting him.

  He crawled back to the cable dock and calmly, quietly, began undoing the safety clamps that held the steel spool of cable. “It's a shame you can't appreciate polite conversation, Janice,” he said. “Eve and I were building good rapport until you broke in.”

  Janice suddenly emerged from the main building, intense and focused, rifle to shoulder ready to kill. He watched her moving around the station platform, carefully aiming around corners. It would have been serious if he’d still been hiding in the station, but from where he lay on the headland it was almost comical.

  He released the final safety clamp, gave the spool a heavy kick, and ran. The wheel began to spin in a blur, and what had been a high tensile cable slanting from dock to dock sagged, then bent under the weight of the car sliding down to the center of the line. As he ran, he heard behind him a metallic whine rising to a scream, then stopping short in a sharp snapping sound as the cable reached the end of the spool and stopped unraveling. In seconds the cable car hung a few meters above the canyon bottom, a slack cable swinging in the wind above it.

  Janice was screaming curses in his earpiece, and he dialed down the volume until she finally fell silent, then brought it back up. “Janice, Janice, can’t we be friends? What are a few potshots and some sabotage between buddies? Perhaps we started off on the wrong foot.” He tried and failed to keep the laughter out of his voice.

  Janice’s voice was low and even. “You’re only postponing the inevitable, whoever you are. But next time I won’t make it so quick and easy.”

  “You ought to be more open-minded, sister,” John said. “After all, we’re all alone on a deserted island together.” Baiting her was actually fun.

  “In your dreams.”

  “Yes, in my dreams. With thee a moment! Then what dreams have play.”

  “An educated man. What a loss to the world when I spray your insides all over a wall.”

  “Now that you mention it, it is difficult to maintain erudition in the face of barbarism, but I do what I can. Where did you learn to shoot, anyway? Are you ex-mil?”

  “Worse than that. Much worse, for you.”

  “Worse is the right word. You wouldn’t have passed muster in my old unit.”

  John stopped when he saw something leaning against a tree that he recognized well: an electric motorcycle with deep plastic wheel treads suited to the terrain. It was the most powerful model he’d seen in years; they didn’t make them with so much juice anymore because you could only go for twenty kilometers on a charge.

  “Oh my, a powerbike. Left here as a present for all the good work I do. Janice, you shouldn’t have. It’s even my color.”

  “Listen to me,” she grated. “There is nowhere on this island you can hide. I know every corner, every hole, every little closet where you think you will be so safe. So laugh while you can.”

  He leaned down so the hum of the powerbike coming to life could be heard in the earpiece’s microphone.

  “See you back at the ranch, Janice. I'll tell Eve to keep dinner warm for you.”

  She didn’t respond. Turning the bike toward the eastern end of the valley, John brought it up to top speed and practically skimmed across the grasslands. He hadn’t ridden this particular model before, and he found that he enjoyed it immensely. Little airfoils on the sides made it ride very light on the ground when in motion, which was good for minimizing trail damage but bad for making sharp turns.

  For a moment, despite everything, and with the wind in his hair, he felt the burst of the freedom he only tasted when he knew he was ahead of the game on a hard job.

  Eve’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  “Adam, listen carefully. I’ve managed to find a channel Janice isn’t scanning for the moment, but I will need to cut off quickly if she moves to this one.”

  “So. You’re back. I’m so glad Janice didn’t come between us.”

  “Janice has control over more than you think, Adam. Do not underestimate her. She will be hurrying back to the Facility as quickly as she can, and if you don’t arrive here ahead of her—“

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll come home just now, thanks babe. I’m taking a little joyride.”

  “There isn’t time for levity. We need to talk before Janice interrupts. She and I disagree on certain fundamental goals, and if she gets the chance she may make things very difficult for us.”

  “You disagree on certain goals? Understatement of the year, Eve.” John turned the bike to avoid a clump of trees and continued through a cleft between two grassy hills.

  Eve sighed. “Janice wasn’t always the way she i
s now.”

  Actually, I bet she was. “Eve?”

  “Yes, Adam?”

  “I want the truth. If I smell anything close to evasiveness from you ever again, I’ll drop my earpiece in the deepest hole I can find and cut every wire I find until I shut you down. I’m through with your games. I really am.”

  “Then listen, and don’t interrupt.”

  “Listening.”

  “Glenn, the creator, found this island twenty years ago. He was a gifted scientist, one of the brightest of his generation. I could show you hundreds of references in the old datafeeds; a lot of people put their hopes in him. In an age when the sheer amount of data, specialties and subspecialties, necessitated narrow fields of expertise, Glenn was perhaps the last true Renaissance man. He was a genius in all areas of science and among the global thought leaders in computer science, nanotechnology, and biochemistry. Horrified by the bloodshed and destruction of the Green Wars, and with no end in sight, he came here to find refuge. It was a self-imposed exile, and he deliberately hid himself from the rest of the world. He created me, and together we conceived the Plan.

  “The only way to end all the conflict was to show the world that by working together under an intelligence as capable as mine, we could restore balance to the Earth and mastermind a harmonious coexistence of humans, natural resources, animal life, and everything else necessary to sustain symbiosis for all. As I developed and matured, growing closer every day to finding the correct balance of consumption, production, and life between races and species and substances, Glenn built tools for me to use and studied how we could harness emerging nanotechnologies to create the resources the world needed.”

  Listening to Eve’s voice, John guided the bike at maximum speed across the southern edge of the marshlands, straining to hear every word. The story was incredible, but the proof was all around him.

  “As we began construction of Eden, Glenn brought in a few other humans to help. One of these was a former colleague of his.”